Feeling Free
by negativefeeling
Summary: One shot. Based in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Desmond Miles goes out for a walk in Monteriggioni and tries to process all the things he has passed through in so little time. Please read and review.


Disclaimer: I do not own Assassin's Creed nor the characters that appear in the game. They belong to Ubisoft. This is just a fanfiction to practice my writing skills.

* * *

**Feeling free **by negativefeeling.-

Desmond Miles was glad to be in Monteriggioni. He had seen the village so many times through the Animus, that it felt surreal for him to be walking in the very same streets of his long lost memories.

Every time he disconnected from work (aka the Animus 2.0), he rushed to the outside of the mansion so he could enjoy the peace of that warm Italian villa.  
They had arrived some weeks ago: Shaun, Rebecca, Lucy and himself. And from the very first time he landed his feet on Monteriggioni, he knew that he belonged there in some strange way.

He sort of knew where to step on, where to look at, what to look for. For him, it was shocking to see that the old majestic palace where Ezio lived once was ruined, with he balcony still crushed on the ground, the roof unattended and all the windows closed. That made it look like a haunted manor.

Desmond felt sad.  
No.  
Not sad.  
He was upset.  
Upset because he knew that this place was beautiful once.

Every session with the Animus made him understand the Assassin's Creed and, most of all, why do they still exist. And that, in an egoistic way, filled him with pride. However, the machine had also its negative side: being connected meant that he was both free but also trapped, as he had free will to do whatever he wanted to achieve a goal, as long as he stuck to some rules and never tried to fight against his ancestor's memories. Such actions would desynchronize him from the Animus and he could never remember what others wanted him to remember.  
The fact that he was constantly being monitored by three different people didn't help much to keep away the "trapped" sensation.

Desmond was not in the Animus. At least, not right now.

He had stood up suddenly, grabbed a sandwich and after some comments from his fellow companions, made his way to the stairs. He walked upstairs, checking if everything was in place and plugging the headset into his ear, so he could be warned in case of any emergency. When he stepped out, reality was gone again. It was his time to make a new memory.

The black haired boy was alone in the night, away from the hideout. While taking a deep breath, fresh air filled his lungs and the breeze gave him a new life.  
Inside the hideout, he was uneasy: the feeling of stuffy air and the freezing cold made his head dizzy.

As he stepped outside, he instinctively started to run. Who would ever think of Desmond Miles running for fun, when he in the past would just only run for his dear life.  
It was Altaïr's fault. His Arabian ancestor showed him the pleasure of being in total control of his body: "Anima sana in Corpore sano". Sound mind, sound body. Thanks to him he started to love high places, as he could feel when he first went into that abandoned warehouse and was proved by Lucy and the others. Although, truth must be told, he was most impressed by his ancestor Ezio Auditore, as the Italian was faster and more skilled in climbing than Altaïr would have ever been.

Altaïr had his attractiveness, after all: He was the "primus interpares" Assassin. He was born, fed, raised and taught as one. He breathed the creed long before anyone. Al-Mualim was his teacher, but the Student should always surpass the Master. That was what happened with the Arabian. Maybe the details of his childhood were not clear, but the progress in the development of his persona, was interesting enough. All what Altaïr believed in, marked Ezio's life, and even his own.

Maybe Altaïr never knew how to walk and use his gifted eagle vision at the same time, but without him, the Order he was in now, would have never existed.

That reminded him of the very first time Dr Warren Vidic compelled him to sit down on the Animus. Lucy was there, and the doctor just watched.

The Animus at the Abstergo Industries was aseptic just like a surgery room. As cold and dead as a laboratory. When Desmond first lied down on the machine, a constant buzz flooded his head, giving him a horrible headache. He tried to fight the pain, but Vidic's voice told him that it was normal. Minutes later, he was standing in an empty space without walls nor ceiling, where he was, somehow, free. The sensation was strange. This caused him to fear it. There was unlimited bluishness in the white empty space and even if he ran as much as he could, there was no end to it.

Soon he was looking at a third person that vaguely looked like him. An adult male in white robe and white hood, more or less his height, with tanned skin and the very same scar crossing his lips on his face. It looked as if Desmond had another racial features. So close, yet so far. His voice was different also, stronger and more commanding than his. Could this be an astral projection?

And all of a sudden, it was him. It was his hands, his feet, his body. And he began to run, to chase, to spy and to kill. It was him who did all that but again, he didn't have a real free will. Whenever he wanted to say anything, his lips didn't really move, as words were said by another being that seemed to possess his body in certain moments of the memory.

The strangest thing of all was that he felt sympathy for what the "other being" felt. He understood the reasons why he behaved like that and sometimes wished for the past to be changed.

Desmond was thinking while racing through the roofs of the city. The ground under his sneakers was firm. Just like he was. The accelerated heart beat helped him to digest all what he had lived until now. The rough touch of the wooden beams in his hands avoided him to forget what was real. The sound of his steps made him comfortable in his wonderings.

So he wondered again.

He remembered his parents, the ones who kept him in a jail apart from the world and how he hated them for being so cold. How he longed to be free, away from those four walls and ceiling that would never let him see the sky. He remembered the day he forgot his roots and embraced a normal life among normal people. Desmond asked himself if he was happy then with the path he had chosen, being always hidden so not to be suspicious.

He told them, when he got captured, that he used to be an Assassin, but he rejected the duty and escaped. It seemed that the captors wouldn't care about that. His past life would always chase him wherever he went.

And his mind suddenly jumped to other day: The day he learnt that Lucy was there to save him.  
The day he met Rebecca and Shaun first, he felt like a fish out of water. What was he doing there, he couldn't stop asking himself. Then, a new Animus. And back to the Assassins to fight the Templars, again. He couldn't say if it was either a dream come true or a nightmare gone all wrong. At least Rebecca was friendly. Like Lucy. Shaun was a little skeptical, but as long as he didn't try to kill him, it was fine for him.

Desmond thought at first that this had to be a joke. The Knights Templar were long gone, they were just one more chapter in History books. As well as the Assassins, the latter ones never being mentioned even in the History. He knew that they existed, but refused to accept that the resentment had surpassed centuries and still was there.

The second Animus he entered in was warm and comfortable. It was placed in a cozy room full of stuff all around and... more "familiar". As Lucy had been his saviour, he thought he owed her this one, so he sat down and entered to another lost memory of his.

And there he was, Ezio Auditore, a baby born in a good positioned Italian family. A boy whose fate was to become an Assassin. His background was so different from his other ancestor, that he felt sorry for him when he watched how he lost his father and brothers. Maybe it was Rebecca's (or was it Shaun's?) work, to make him remember those important bits of the young Italian's life, so he could develop sympathy for him and Desmond could try his best to synchronize with those memories.

Anyhow, Ezio was warmer. Italy was friendly in his memories. Everything was less intimidating than Jerusalem's, Acre's, or even Masyaf's streets. The way that his Italian ancestor spoke was funny, gesturing a lot with his hands and waving them and throwing them in a different manner than he did. He loved to climb up right to the sky, just like when Ezio -him- decided to see what was in the top of Giotto's Campanile, and then throwing himself down to a cart of flowers in the middle of the street.

Desmond missed the stacks of hay. Why the modern world couldn't use carts filled with hay so he could dive into them? As much as he ran, as much as he jumped and climbed, he would never feel complete until he could fall into a stack of hay. The Leap of Faith was challenging at first, but then became an addiction.

When in Masyaf, the first time he had to do it, he remembered the sensation of fear by seeing an endless cliff waiting under his feet. Altaïr stepped forward throwing himself to the void, and Desmond felt a rush of adrenaline flooding his body. When he landed on solid ground, his perception of the world was new.

But it was not him. It was Altaïr who did that.

Not everything was in vain. Not all was left in the memories. Sometimes it unlocked skills that he never imagined. The eagle vision was a good example of that. It was the "bleeding effect", they told him. Anything he learnt from those locked memories he could use it for his own profit.

So Desmond, with his new physical abilities and the gifted vision, was being prepared for a war he was fated to face.

And on top of the church's bell tower, he kept thinking on the last months. Would he support all of what they want him to support? Or would he break in the process, like an old toy? Ezio started from nothing and became a hero. Altaïr was degraded to a novice and re-founded the Order. He, a normal bartender was a subject of an experiment and now he was about to find the Piece of Eden. None of his ancestors failed on their missions, neither was he to fail.

Desmond decided to stop thinking on anything. He left his high place on the church and started to run again. In the small fenced villa of Monteriggioni, a shadow would move atop of the roofs, racing against time itself. The silhouette of a man that swiftly changed places in the buildings around belonged to Desmond. He would use his eagle vision for mere fun, and sometimes he would find a relic which he would treasure in the hideout.

The moon was pale in the sky, lightening his skin, giving his white hood a ghostly appearance. As he leaped from a roof to a beam and to a scaffolding, he started to forget everything. When he hung in the walls, trying to climb and placing his hands away from his head was an effort that gave him a reason to keep going.

Physical effort made him feel fine. He had escaped both the Assassins and the Templars, being a misfit for such a long time. He just tried to forget his horrible childhood and the prison he was kept in until he could fly away. Running made him feel different. He could leave all those things that hurt him for almost his entire life behind. Climbing gave him a new point of view.

Desmond was setting all that knowledge inside of him, putting the small packages of memories and feelings on their right places, forgiving him and forgetting all his past, but not his roots.

He was moving fast, not even thinking about that, but his brain needed that time alone to set things right. Desmond started to pant. It was almost three hours since he exited the hideout and he hardly stopped to catch a breath. When he decided to end the race against himself, the boy found him just atop of Ezio's attic. From up there he could see the whole village, dimly lit by the moon and the few lamplight in the streets.

The view was somewhat overwhelming. The whole town transformed itself into a miniature, all under his feet. And in the air, a sweet scent of flowers.

And then Desmond checked his heart. Everything was okay. The shattered pieces of his life and memories were all integrated in him at last. All he needed now was to stand up on the highest point of the attic roof so he could feel complete.

Thus far, this was the only time he was feeling completely free.

-The End


End file.
